Tonight Erin starts her graduate career at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. This is actually quite fun as I get to drive her there and she gets to have more of an indoctrination into the culture and atmosphere she will encounter whilst taking classes at this college. Her emphasis/program: communications.

This is actually very exciting.

Apart from that, I’ve had some thoughts after reading Kurt Vonnegut‘s rules for writing. There are eight of them. One of his rules: Start as close to the end as possible. After I read that I began to reflect on the various books I’ve read where they end up going into series and those series don’t (really) appear to have any kind of definable ending. Kim Harrison write a compelling series of stories that, when I first started reading them, felt more like candy than anything with substance, and they can be read that way, but after the last couple of books there is not only depth to the series (evidenced earlier in the books) but also a direction she is taking the reader. I don’t see her being like Xanth author Pierce Anthony and plopping out another novel every year about the same world, updating it with new and mundane, or not mundane, characters; but really as a series that can be read, each book on its own, or as a deepening mystery into something far more… sinister.

Another one of Vonnegut’s rules was: Every character should want something, even if it is just a glass of water. That is an interesting rule, and possibly a good rule of thumb. Thinking about that, no character should be introduced for any length of time without him/her needing or wanting something. Erin was reading The Count of Monte Christo the other night and read off a passage to me that was funny, but completely out of place. I asked, “What character says that?” she gave me a name, and then I said, “I don’t know who that is.” She repeated the name and then admitted that she had no idea who or what that character was either. This interchange does not mean that the character doesn’t hold some role; it is an illustration of an author, Dumas, inserting something into the book that might have been better coming from a different character who actually has a purpose in the story.

Ayn Rand, pretty quickly, in her book Atlas Shrugged has Francisco in a room playing with marbles when Dagne knows he is more driven and intelligent than he is acting. In this context, the character is expressing his disinterest and trying to convey the principles John Gault promotes.

Another rules is: Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. This is an interesting rule and one I think I am at odds with. I mean, a religious person prays, receives inspiration about direction, and then heads off on their own. They, often, have little to go on but faith and faith sometimes fails them.

In real life, we often don’t have enough information to make decisions, move on to the next stage, or even not screw things up pretty royally. Granted, the information and experience we have (incidentally the definition for hope) is enough that we don’t really screw things up, but the potential always exists. I find it interesting (and necessary) that the author of a story, according to Vonnegut’s rules, is meant to tell as much as possible as soon as possible, and leave out the suspense. Suspense is far overrated, but even a well crafted introduction to what you are writing about should be enough to hint at where you are going and how.

It is interesting to read about how other people write. For Vonnegut, this was his method. Write, tell, make sure everyone has a purpose, and be a sadist about writing. I’ve actually come across many articles and books where this is true. Having a hard time with what comes next, cause a problem, drop the protagonist and crew into a pit-o-lava, and etc. The outcome, often, is moving the story forward. The author of Ella Enchanted (Gail Carson Levine) was on campus and her way of working through a snag in writing is, literally, to simply cause havoc on her characters.

When you really think about stuff like that, though, isn’t that how life is. You are going along, la-di-da, and then BAM!!!! you are broadsided by a car going too fast for the dry weather conditions and your car is totaled (note: my car was totaled sitting by its lonesome in front of our house; I have been in an accident where there was a broadsiding, though, memory hints it was the car I was in that did the broadside and not the car that ran the red light because he couldn’t stop in time and didn’t bother to try and give himself more time). You don’t have money, you need a car, and your car is dead to the world. This is the example of sadism that comes into writing. It is unexpected, sometimes tragic, and the characters still have to move toward the end of the scene, book, or whatever.

I think one other example of this is a stage play where they were meant to use a gun at one point, early in the play the gun went off early, it was pointing at the main character, who, in response to a gun going off and pointing at him, fell over dead. The cast had to (in part) improvise around his part for the rest of the play. True story, but still an example of what happens when you throw in the wrath of Gebus into the mix and not care about your character (regardless of how approachable or likable… I wonder if that is how J.K. Rowling wrote this way?).

Regardless, the outcome is pretty standard. Good. Bad. Good. Bad. ad infinitum.

I am sure there is more to this, an essay on Vonnegut’s writing rules and life, I mean, for example, if you are a writer and, say, in your life you are starting as close to the end as possible, drug use and alcohol would probably go a long way to making sure the end was as close to the beginning as possible; though, connecting this to not abusing the readers time is pretty hard as the drunk, stoned people I’ve known in my life have a tendency to, well, be wastes of my time when they are stoned and drunk. I did read Slaughterhouse-5 and didn’t mind it and it felt a lot like the rantings of someone who needed more sleep, though the writing (as far as I am able to tell) did follow the eight rules.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassanadra West

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